Donald R. Roberts, Ph.D.
Donald R. Roberts has had two careers. He completed a career as an Army medical entomologist in 1987 and then retired as an academician researcher from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 2007.

Don received his doctoral degree in 1973 from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas. For the next several years he conducted research on malaria and arbovirus vectors in the Amazon Basin of Brazil. Focal points of research were the epidemiology and dynamics of malaria transmission and methods of malaria control with special emphasis on how DDT functioned to control indoor malaria transmission.

In 1980 he became the Chief, Department of Entomology, at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in Washington, D.C. While at WRAIR he directed pioneering research that produced an assay for detecting malaria parasites in mosquitoes.

In 1984 Don moved to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, MD, where he served as a uniformed member of the faculty until his retirement from the Army at the end of 1987.

In 1988, he continued as a civilian member of the faculty at USUHS up to his retirement as Professor of Tropical Public Health in June 2007.

During his years as an academician, he specialized in research on applications of remote sensing and GIS technologies to the study of malaria and malaria epidemiology in Mexico, Belize and other countries. He created and directed a Center for applications of remote sensing and GIS to public health. In addition, he continued his studies on how DDT functions as a spatial repellent to keep mosquitoes from entering houses and transmitting disease. This research eventually became the topic of a major NIH grant to screen compounds as potential replacements for DDT in malaria control programs.

After retiring, Don was awarded U.S. Medicine’s Frank Brown Berry Prize (http://www.usmedicine.com/berrywinner.cfm), awarded for exceptional contributions to healthcare by a Federal healthcare professional.

In recent years he became intensely involved in advocacy for indoor residual spraying of DDT and other insecticides for malaria control. He campaigned to prevent a DDT ban through negotiations for the international persistent organic pollutants (POPs) treaty. DDT was not banned by the POPs agreement and is presently being used for control of malaria.

Don has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers. He has been called upon to give Senate testimony of disease control issues, is a board member of Africa Fighting Malaria and an advisor for the Innovative Vector Control Consortium.

He continues his work as an advocate for public health insecticides to include DDT for control of malaria and other important human disease and for increased investment of public funds to find a fully adequate replacement for DDT.

Richard Tren
Richard is an economist and has worked for over a decade on issues of development and global health with a focus on malaria. His interest began in the late 1990s while researching the use of DDT to control malaria in Southern Africa. Witnessing the devastating epidemics of malaria in the region and remarkable way in which the public health use of insecticides could save lives, Richard became a committed advocate for DDT and other public health insecticides.

Richard is a co-founder and chairman of Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM), a malaria policy and advocacy group with offices in South Africa and Washington DC. AFM was founded during the negotiations of the Stockholm Convention and, by working with malaria scientists from around the world, helped to secure an exemption for DDT’s continued use in malaria control.

Richard and AFM work closely with malaria control programs and researchers in sub-Saharan African countries, assisting in advocacy efforts and defending the use of insecticides in public health programs.

Richard has been widely published in the print media in the US, Europe and Africa with pieces in Investor’s Business Daily, New York Post, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal Europe and Business Day. He has been published in the scientific literature, including PLoS One, Journal and Malaria Journal and has written many scholarly reports for think tanks and policy institutes in the US, EU and South Africa.

Richard was the recipient of the prestigious Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2009 Julian Simon Memorial Award in recognition for his work on DDT and public health.

Richard received his BSc (Hons) degree in Economics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and an MSc in Environmental and Resource Economics from University College London.

Richard is a council member of the Free Market Foundation of Southern Africa and an Adjunct Fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is a South African and resides in Washington DC.

Roger Bate
Roger Bate is the Legatum Fellow in Global Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. He researches international health policy, with a special interest in counterfeit medicines and malaria control.  He has a PhD in economics from Cambridge University. Dr. Bate’s writings have appeared in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Lancet, PLoS One, the Malaria Journal, and the British Medical Journal. He regularly contributes to AEI's Health Policy Outlook series. He attended negotiating meetings in 1999 and 2000 in the build up to the UN Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and argued against major restrictions on the use of DDT under the Convention.

Dr Bate conducted extensive research in India and numerous Africa countries on the public health consequences of the counterfeit drug trade. His latest book is Making a Killing: the Deadly Implications of the Counterfeit Drug Trade (AEI Press, May 2008). He is the author or editor of 14 books and over 1,000 journal and newspaper articles.

His broader interests include aid policy in Africa and the developing world, evaluating the performance and effectiveness of USAID, the World Bank, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, NGOs, and other aid organizations and development policy initiatives. He writes extensively on topics such as endemic diseases in developing countries (malaria, HIV/AIDS); access and innovation in pharmaceuticals; taxes and tariffs; water policy; and international health agreements.

He was the founder of the Frederic Bastiat Journalism Prize, co-founder with Richard Tren of Africa Fighting Malaria, where he remains on the board of directors. He is also a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

Jennifer Zambone
Growing up in the formerly malarial swamps and marshes of New Jersey, Jennifer Zambone took an early and very personal interest in the mosquito and role in vector-borne disease. After receiving a bachelors of arts in biology and English and a juris doctorate from Washington and Lee University, Jennifer worked on regulatory issues before returning to her early interest in mosquitoes and their effects and joining the Africa Fighting Malaria as its Washington, DC director. She now works as the publications manager at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.